As 'Occupy Colleges' Gains Steam, All Quiet on Nearby Campuses

In conjunction with the Occupy Wall Street movement, students from more than 150 colleges participated in a similar movement on Thursday, aptly titled “Occupy Colleges."

The protest, according to the Huffington Post, gave students an avenue to express “frustration over increasing amounts of student loan debt and the rising cost of tuition” throughout colleges nationwide.

Despite this, all has been quiet at Fairleigh Dickinson University’s Florham Campus as of Friday morning, according to Scott Giglio, the university’s assistant director of public relations.

“We don’t have anything going on like that,” Giglio said. “We don’t have any of our students demonstrating at this time.”

Giglio didn’t rule out the possibility of such an event occurring on-campus, but declared that it is hard to say beforehand what action the college would take if a protest were to occur.

“We would have to evaluate the situation as it happened,” Giglio said.

While college students across the nation are using their first amendment rights to protest on campus, Drew University students-- and professors-- are taking a different approach.

"Some of our faculty and students actually went to the protests (in New York) to take in the atmosphere and talk to the people," said Michael Bressman, Communications Associate and Special Assistant to the President at Drew University. "They did that all in the name of witnessing history, which I think is the primary interest that an educational institution would have in something like this. It’s a historical type of event that could potentially influence the way people think."

As the inspiration for the movement at colleges and universities nationwide, Occupy Wall Street has gained nationwide attention while taking place over the past month at New York City’s Zuccotti Park.

The protest, which is in opposition to the current financial instability throughout the United States, was speculated to be approaching its end on Friday morning, due to a police-sanctioned cleaning of the park that was scheduled to take place. This was until Brookline Properties, the owners of Zuccotti Park, decided in the early morning hours on Friday to allow the protesters to stay in the park, according to the Huffington Post.